Lifeline
by sylph-feather
Summary: Hattori Heiji, Kudo Shinichi, and the deep waters of night terrors.


When Heiji blinks into wakefulness, it is like he is not blinking at all. Pools of darkness rest in both realms, whether his sight is blocked or not; for a moment, it is confusing to his sleep addled mind and he cannot tell if his eyes _are _open.

Those thoughts are interrupted by another small noise— presumably the source of his wakefulness. A soft whimper from the ground, pained and wheezing.

Heiji doesn't even consider Conan sleeping on a mat as the creator of such sound; his first thought is that some animal snuck in somehow, because _Shinichi Kudo _making a childish cry…? _No way. _

Of course he finds no mysterious animal to match the conclusion his tired, denialistic mind came up with. Hattori steps out of bed to kneel in the darkness and finds a tightly curled up Kudo shuddering under a thin blanket in a tight ball.

Heiji reaches out— _to shake him awake? To confirm the odd reality?— _but pauses as though his hand hits the solid block of Shinichi's pride. Heiji knows Kudo wouldn't want to be woke _like this _and seen by someone he considered a best friend.

There's another pained noise, Kudo curling up tighter into himself. Hattori stares at that desperately shaking form and the wall breaks around his hand, plunging and bumping Kudo's shoulder.

Kudo stiffens under the touch, entire body still. Heiji cannot see details considering the encroaching darkness, but Kudo does not seem to be awake in the way he doesn't sit up, doesn't vocalize confusion with a frustrated grumble. Heiji _wants _him to, wants this to be _easy_; he wants to hear a groan of Kudo coming into conscious and calming before slipping off to into the sleepy sea, calm. He'd even take the _medium _route of wakefulness and embarrassment— a whiny voice grumbling about the earliness and then perhaps cawing in some matter of pridefulness at the state he was in.

For a moment, hand on that tense shoulder and back, Hattori relishes those scenarios rolling through his head before wafting the haze away to reveal reality.

His hand feels so large, cradling bones beneath skin. The shoulder blade tickles the tips of his finger as Kudo breathes sharply, still asleep. Part of Heiji knows Kudo is both _not _any of that and yet also _is, _and this time he is leaning more towards _is _than _not. _

Gently, the Osakan presses insistently, a light shake accompanied by a light whisper of, "Kudo."

Still, Kudo does not make this easier, wrapping tightly under his blankets and shuddering away from the touch with renewed fervor, soundless as shakes wrack his form.

Heiji knows not what to do save for repetition; more strongly, more askingly, he pokes and prods, murmuring, "Kudo, Kudo," breathily.

This time, Kudo _does _breach the surface— violently so, jerking back with a wheeze, scuttling away sleepily. Tangled in blankets, the sixteen year old collapses rather quickly, thunking on the wooden floor.

"Ya good?" Heiji frowns, leaning forward in concern.

This does not have the expected (or hoped for) response of sarcasm; perhaps a _never better _as Kudo collected himself and his mask, dragged himself off the floor and smoothed everything back out in some gambit to return to normal.

What happens instead melts away that situation, washes it away like soft mud. What happens instead is Shinichi coils defensively while clutching at his heart, a shivering snake ready to strike, fear in every twitch of motion.

He has breached _sleep _but not the dream; still his mind drowns.

Heiji sits there, confused on what to do. "I won't hurt you," he says, but it is no use; Kudo does not comprehend anything asides from _threat. _Perhaps his mind had painted another picture entirely; superimposed something far more terrifying over Heiji, beast of nightmare overtaking any of his actions.

Hattori pauses there, for a moment, picturing someone else over him, inhabiting skin of something that could terrify his friend so, so deeply.

The first solution Heiji comes up with is _leave. _Perhaps it is not the best solution, but to be fair to Hattori he has also just woken up. He drags himself away, out; space, space to wake up and deal with all of _that _without being present as whatever figure Kudo sees.

The hallway feels brisk when he leaves Kudo in the room, and he feels those eyes glittering in the dark pinned to his back warily and not-there. The phrase _mindless with fear _comes to mind as Heiji stands there, uncharacteristically stiff. _Detective of the East, mindless with fear. _He replays the phrase a few times in his head, tasting bitter words.

Heiji is not sure how long he stands there, straining for anything, barely refraining from bursting back in. It is hard. It is _very hard. _Most of him wants to jump back in and shake Kudo the rest of the way to wakefulness, despite that being the worst option; Hattori can _just barely _stand being away when the image of primal fear from that childish face— _he is not truly a child, _he reminds himself, but it does not help— is burned into his mind. _Is _burning, image smoldering; Hattori still sees it, feels that raw desperation.

_Long enough, _Heiji decides, carefully prying the door open to his room.

Nothing can go to plan; a collected Kudo cannot stand above his temporary bed and be snarky, cannot be _recovered. _Hattori freezes at the door, ideals once again crumbling away like rotted wood. A good sharp poke sends it crumbling into flaking dust, filling his lungs.

Kudo does not even stand; he kneels, looking strained in every way, in pain and afraid. In pain and afraid _of nothing, _of his own mind turned against him, enslaved by the dark night.

Hattori decides a different approach.

The room is quiet, but not in a soft way. Hattori's footsteps are gentle but deliberate as he attempts to make his presence kindly known, but nothing about Shinichi is soft— imagined fear sends his breaths skittering and form rattling.

Kudo does not react to Heiji, even as the Osakan mirrors him to kneel down beside him. Heiji cannot decide whether this is positive or not; being looked at with such terror was almost sickening, but at least Kudo was not in so deep he was unaware of everything around him completely. Kudo was _never _like that, always paranoid and watchful, eyes tracking those around and behind, scanning; to see fear had dragged him into its mire so deep as to block what seemed to be an innate instinct was unsettling.

"I suck at this, sorry," Heiji warned preemptively, then warned "I'm gonna touch you, alright?"

No response, still. Shinichi continued shaking, continued wheezing. Heiji's hand travelled forwards again.

Contact was warm, Kudo shuddering against his hand for half a second as his small heart beat wildly against both his own hand and Hattori's— cupped above the hand digging at Kudo's chest.

"Is this alright?" Heiji probed.

No _verbal _response, but Heiji could read the stilling and the calming breaths. The heartbeat slowed, but it still tapped out the beat of a dying canary against his palm.

"I'm going to touch you more, now," Heiji warned again, hoping they weren't falling on deaf ears.

A slight nod tasted like sugary success far more than it would have ordinarily.

Carefully, Heiji scooted over across the floor again, second arm snaking around the small form, tugging Kudo into a fortifying hug. Heiji loudly breathed deeply, _inhale… exhale… inhale… exhale. _His chest rose and fell against the stiff, cold, still-shaking body.

Slowly, Kudo copied, melting into Heiji more and more with each _in, out, _form stilling out.

Heiji tried not to blush, tried not to think about it; tried to be nothing but calm, because Kudo definitely did not need to feel harsher, sharper breaths he could mistake as danger (rather than the truthful _embarrassment). _

It is hard to pinpoint the transition of _aware _to _unaware _given Kudo clearly believed he was (to some extent) safe. It _is _easy to pinpoint _conscious _and _unconscious, _because one moment Kudo is perfectly almost uncharacteristically fine with what boils down to cuddling, and the next he stiffens and splutters incoherently.

Heiji tips his head towards him from his awkward crouch, meeting confused and embarrassed eyes for a moment. "Are you alright?"

"Of course I am," Kudo hisses. It is clumsy; it does not lack heat, but it also does not lack a tremor as the air tickles Heiji's chest.

Interestingly and notably, he does not pull off of Hattori much. Kudo shuffles and leans away, looking half vexedly at his hands as though he cannot muster the effort to fully shove away.

"Hmph," Heiji huffs doubtfully, watching the way Kudo's hair flutters with his own breath. He does not press the matter, though; even with that one sign of doubt, Kudo's small body has tensed again. Heiiji resolves not to ask what the nightmare was about either, considering that with Kudo's history of painful poisons and lurking threats he can picture it well enough, and it needs not be brought up lest Kudo once again be ensnared in the dark waters of terror.

It leaves Heiji to lean back against his bed, lowering his hands away from Shinichi's back. Despite the hug dropping, Kudo does not finally give in to his clear desires to squirm away. _Maybe not as with it as I thought, _Heiji concludes.

Hattori softly chuckles as Kudo's breaths slip from wakefulness once again into sleep, soft form melting more thoroughly into his chest. Kudo is curled up, but not in a way that screams terror. The chuckle rumbles through the small teen but does not wake him from his slide into sleep, and Heiji bites his tongue to hold back a cooed "_someone's sleepy,"_ jab.

It leaves him to lean back, relishing in warm content for a moment, own tension from the events draining. Sleep begins to claim Hattori as well, dragging warm tendrils down his spine, massaging at his neck and wrapping his chest.

Heiji blinks up when his chin touches downwards, bumping against his collar. He glances down at Kudo, thinking of his reaction come morning, glances back at his position and thinks of his own poor back kinking and twisting uncomfortably.

Grudgingly, he slowly-slowly-slowly crawls upwards, one hand braced against Kudo and the other against the floor and then the bed, achieving a standing position without casualty of sleep. Kudo does naught but grumble and shuffle a little in his sleep, ordinary hypervigilance overruled by perhaps exhaustion, or perhaps feeling of safety.

Heiji almost leans down, brushes Kudo off into his own bed, and drops off to sleep again— but, staring at Kudo's rumpled, empty, cold-looking bed, he cannot bring himself to do so. The image of a terrified Shinichi at his feet is _too fresh._

_Let him raise hell in the morning, _he decides tiredly, gently easing his clingy charge down into his own bed.

Nestled together, they sleep.

In the morning comes indignant embarrassment. In the following time comes discussions of deep fear— _paranoia, therapy, trauma. _All this for another day; for this night, there is only the honeyed embrace of calm and still cloaking the evening with silence.

**xXx**

**Yes, these are genuine recommended techniques for PTSD flashbacks— touching a person with consent and-or letting them know and gauging their reactions. Once that step is done, you begin slowly engaging with them. **

**The psychological reasoning is this: basically, when you are overcome by fear, your brain shuts down its "levels" of thought to the very minimum (aka the evolutionarily oldest "reptilian" brain). In performing this system of recovery, you comfort one "level" at a time, first comforting the "reptilian" brain with simple touch sensation, then activating "mammalian" brain with highly simplistic interaction (simple speech, face recognition), THEN finally engaging the "primate" brain with more complicated dialogue. Bam! Brain fully online again. **

**(BTW, all the "animal" brain things are because the brain evolved outwards on top of itself, with layers and thus complexity being added over evolution. In other words, we share that base "reptilian" brain structure all the way back with reptiles— hence why it's also called the ancient brain— and so on and so forth). **


End file.
